


(just for the moment) let's be still

by hitlikehammers



Series: Cardiophilia Sequence [13]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: (And All Its Multitudinous Complications), Canon Divergence - The Empty Hearse, Heartbeats, Love, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-08
Updated: 2016-12-08
Packaged: 2018-09-07 05:13:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8784475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: He needs to know it again. Breathe it in. Needs to touch it, needs to measure every quiver of its beating heart. Upon returning: despite everything, in the face of everything—Goddamnit, but Sherlock needs.---Cut-Scene from The Cardiophilia Sequence, should S3 have proceeded as in canon versus how it proceded in this series  (Winter Gift-Fic Extravaganza, 3/25)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nagaem_C](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nagaem_C/gifts).



> For [vividstitch](http://vividstitch.tumblr.com/), for the third day of my of the 25 Days/Fics of my Winter Gift Fic Extravaganza. Unbeta'd, and without Lestrade, for which I apologise.
> 
> Tangentially related to [The Cardiophilia Sequence](http://archiveofourown.org/series/19654), per the request. Hopefully it's close enough <3
> 
> Title credit [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwaGzIPpbBI).

“You’re a right prick, you realise.”

 

And oh, but the words themselves are lifeblood and the swell of motion, the swirl of life and force against the warp and weft of bone and being, and Sherlock had never forgotten, of course he hadn’t forgotten but even the best kept clippings of the more precious things in the world fade with time, unforgiving, and Sherlock had known his recollection of just the sound was missing the gravitas of all it held and here, _here_ , he knows it again.

 

He nearly moans for the way it suffuses the room, the air he breathes in, the weight of the head against his chest like the meaning of life sparked shrill and clear after too long a death: nearly.

 

“Well aware,” he murmurs back, instead.

 

“I am fucking furious with you,” and Sherlock knows it: knows it because it’s obvious, boring, _not ever boring_ against his hand around John, his palm against John’s sternum measuring every long-lost breath, every beat he’d feared lay foreit. 

 

And that’s alright. That would be entirely alright, so long as Sherlock could feel his warmth every now and again. Could renew the memory in his mind and press it into every inch, every pane and plank of his palace until the fibres of the wood, of the muscle, of the stretching, searing, aching-beating heart spelled that presence, that pure knowledge of here, and safe, and _home_.

 

“I don’t know if I will _ever_ stop being absolutely fucking _furious_ with you.”

 

If only for a moment.

 

“As is your right.”

 

Sherlock dips his chin downward and inhales deep against the crown of John’s head; breathes him in like he can absorb the knowledge of every moment, every blink between this instant, and the last instant, a lifetime and a pulse-pump from the now all at once: impossible.

 

But Sherlock breathes him in anyway.

 

“I can’t stand to look at you,” John says into the ether of the empty room that spreads before them, toward the wall that faces them both in equal indifference. “I physically cannot _stand_ to look at you right now.”

 

And Sherlock regrets it, because he cannot see John’s eyes, cannot trace John’s lips; but no matter.

 

Sherlock can look at John, can know him with every sense he possesses and can categorise him from every other angle he can grasp, can conceive and that is enough. 

 

“Hmm.”

 

After years in the desert, even the emptiest promise of water is a boon.

 

“I don’t know how long that’s going to last,” John says, his tone warning, as if he thinks that will change something, as if he believe that will shift everything. Sherlock wants, on some level, to laugh, but he can’t. 

 

He can’t, because to do so would dislodge the perfect fit of John’s body against Sherlock’s own, would move the way John rests against his chest and in turn jostle the full-breadth press of Sherlock’s hand against John’s heart as living proof, as evidence undeniable for all the night Sherlock woke screaming when no sound could be risked, when Sherlock woke drenched in sweat in the bitter cold, when Sherlock remembered the feel of tears on his cheeks as they froze in the breeze atop a building, as they slid against fingers and compromised the hold on a phone, had blurred the last vision on the last day of a world Sherlock had come to cherish, beyond all reason or expectation; crystallised in his veins so that every moment that life pressed through them meant pain, cried _wrong_.

 

“I...I’m afraid you’re just a dream again.”

 

Sherlock barely hears it, caught in his own thoughts, having become long acclimated to the sound of John’s voice in his ears, in his mind, softer than the pulse of his own heart in dark places, far places—he’d come to know it, accept it, and move on, so Sherlock barely hears John’s half-whispered confession, but he does.

 

And Sherlock’s known his share of dreams these past years; juxtaposed against the nightmares.

 

So he left his free hand, and he cups John’s face with the utmost delicacy, and he’s not surprised when John’s eyes drift closed before he can meet Sherlock’s gaze as his head turns against Sherlock’s chest, but he is beyond grateful when John leans into the touch and lets himself be moved, lets his chin be tilted and lets Sherlock claim is lips, slow and smooth and ever so desperate, ever so ready to consume and be consumed, whichever come first and he bends himself, shapes himself so that John remains pressed against his heartbeat, intimate and sure as it starts to pound, starts to race and asks to be touched, to be accepted and at the very least not scorned; asked to be known and murmured soft for the possibility of being cherished by the only soul worth the sentiment given, let alone received: Sherlock keeps him, in those moments, knowing full well it may be their last.

 

John gasps against him, shivers when they break apart. His eyes are still closed but Sherlock relishes the vision of his lashes, played; his lips, swollen red.

 

Perfection.

 

“Are you still?” Sherlock breathes against him, lips catching, cracks and corners slick against consonants. “Afraid?”

 

And Sherlock knows he means more than fear of a dream, than fear of ephemerality, of life and death and the lies that stretch beyond them, the truth that encompass both that no one knows, not even then, not even now: Sherlock knows, and in the hitch of John’s breath, in John’s thrumming blood beneath Sherlock’s hand, he can tell beyond a doubt that John knows, too.

 

“I,” John mouths, less than speaks, and Sherlock feels the drag of it, the taste of it intoxicating against his parted lips. “Less.”

 

The corners of Sherlock’s mouth quirk, hopeful where he didn’t know before to hope, and god, dear god, he knows it now.

 

And god _damnit_ , but he _needs_.

 

“Progress, then,” he says, and John’s laugh is harsh, but so very sweet, and that, too, becomes a part of the walls, the cells, the shape and form of Sherlock’s mind; of all that he is. 

 

So Sherlock breathes it, as long as he can; and John doesn’t move, so it lasts, oh dear god.

 

Sherlock licks the lines of those lips until he can’t tell their texture by feeling any longer, but he doesn’t need to; John’s heart beats the lines, drags the dry spots, and eventually Sherlock just runs the shape over again, repetition, never dull just because he can, he _can_ and oh; oh. 

 

 _Oh_.

 

“You’re not very talkative,” John pulls back, and Sherlock’s heart leaps in fear against John’s touch until John rests the bridge of his nose against Sherlock’s throat, feels the beat there instead as he fits under Sherlock’s chin: willingly. Breath warm there.

 

Safe.

 

“Renovating,” Sherlock answers idly, breathes until his pulse is steady once again because it should be, _deserves_ to be, not for Sherlock’s own earning but simply because John lives, in his arms, flesh and bone and beating blood and that was all that mattered.

 

All that ever mattered.

 

“Yeah?” John asks, innocent, and Sherlock could leave it there. He can hear it in John’s tone that John expects him to.

 

But Sherlock doesn’t.

 

“I thought he’d managed it,” Sherlock muses; confesses. Speaks the thing unspeakable. “Burn the heart.”

 

“He didn’t,” John says simply, slipping down and kissing the palpable pulse through Sherlock’s skin against his ribs. “S’right here.”

 

And Sherlock knows John feels the particular swell and kick of the muscles under those lips, but he cares nothing of it, save that it’s John—it’s John, and it’s him, and it’s _them_ , if only for the here and now.

 

“No,” Sherlock sifts a hand through John’s hair, cups his head; strokes fingertips along his jaw, cups his cheek and holds John all the closer. “It’s right _here_.”

 

John sighs, happy and vexed all at once but he stays pressed to Sherlock’s heartbeat, only real at all for the fact of John Watson, Sherlock would swear it.

 

Against all reason or sense, he would _swear_ it.

 

“You’ve brought a right mess with you,” John breathes against the push of Sherlock’s blood; “ _again_.”

 

“Do you expect less of me?”

 

John chuckles, and so close to his heart, just skin and bone and careless viscera between: so close, it feels a song, a symphony of novel shape and colour.

 

“I proposed,” John murmurs, resigned and yet something else, something else _too_. “She accepted, I—”

 

“John.”

 

John makes to look up, to _look up_ , but stops himself.

 

Sherlock reaches, touches, holds to him nonetheless.

 

“If there is anything of me that you can divorce from doubt, here and now…”

 

And oh, but John breaks from his touch and it’s painful.

 

John breaks from his touch and _looks at him_ , and good god, but it’s exquisite.

 

Sherlock can barely breathe, for a moment. He frames John’s face with his palms: the world upended, and re-righted again, for the first time.

 

Sherlock’s blood was running backward, perhaps; the globe turning wrong on its axis, or off entirely—until this moment, just now.

 

John’s eyes have never looked so bright.

 

“I am a detective,” Sherlock says, stroking down John’s skin, across his cheekbones as he studies him, watches his skin flush just the slightest bit, his lips part almost imperceptibly, his chest rise and fall and rise; “and when appropriately motivated?”

 

He pauses, and leans until the line of his lips only just brushes the seam of John’s in union, in the deepest, heat-full vow he’s ever made, or ever will:

 

“I have never met a problem I couldn’t solve.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com).


End file.
